


The Importance of Rules

by Annawry



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Gen, speculative history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 04:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17379614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annawry/pseuds/Annawry
Summary: Little Seifer and Squall, and the very earliest origins of the Disciplinary Committee.“It’s a rule!” Seifer announces, painstakingly copying the list Cid had given him into a notebook.Squall stares at him unconvinced, but Seifer won’t let him see the list, so Squall can’t know for really actually sure. He still thinks Seifer is lying.





	The Importance of Rules

For all that Edea is certain this is the right course of action, her heart still aches. The last of her children, difficult and stubborn both, but hers nonetheless, and she must give them up to a future she has only the barest glimmer of. She gently sweeps Squall’s heavy bangs from his forehead, disguising the brush of her fingers over the clear space between his eyebrows. His older self had a scar there, healed but not so old. He had looked tired in the way that soldiers do but he had also been _strong_. Even before the Sorceress had appeared, her own magic had stirred, responding to the whisper of Odine’s para-magic inside the young man and the sense of more than one of the strange Guardian Force energies. If the magic that churns inside of her is any indication, he will need to be.

She wishes she knew more, she wishes he had answered with words instead of saluting when she’d asked if he would be okay. More than anything she wishes a different future for this sensitive, gentle boy. Squall watches her with solemn eyes, quiet, tears spent.

“I’m sorry I can’t come with you,” she tells him, struggling to keep her voice even and her own tears from spilling. “I will miss you very, very much. You be good for Cid and listen to Seifer, okay?”

Squall nods and next to him Seifer fidgets irritably, little arms crossed over his chest. Unlike Squall, he wants to go. He’s been practicing with wooden sticks like they’re swords for weeks while Cid has been away supervising the renovations of an old Centran shelter. These two will be its first little seeds; one by destiny, one by choice. She scuffs a hand through Seifer’s blonde tufts.

“You be good for Cid, too!” she admonishes firmly. “You’re the oldest, and he’ll need your help. You’re Cid’s lieutenant and I know you’ll be the very best lieutenant you can be!”

Seifer puffs his chest and nods seriously, but he can’t keep a grin from breaking out. “I’m going to be the best ever, you’ll see!” he promises, and strikes a pose with a flourish, a childish salute that makes Edea’s breath catch. She’s already seen it once before.

“Take... Take care of Squall.” She adds, throat tight, “He’s going to need someone strong and brave, just like you. Promise me, Seifer, promise.”

Seifer looks confused and a little annoyed; she knows he thinks Squall is just a baby, that whole year of difference enormous at 6 and 7. But, “I promise, Matron.” he agrees and she feels a little of that tightness ease.

She has no way of knowing Seifer’s future, no assurance that he will grow strong, but she has hope. Seifer will keep his word, and Squall won’t have to face his future or the Sorceress alone. It’s the best she can do for him, either of them. Perhaps the only thing now as Cid steps forward and takes one small hand in each of his.

“Ready, boys?” he asks, joviality forced for their benefit.

“Ready!” Seifer declares while Squall looks off to the side and away.

 

*-*-*-*

 

Cid is at his wit’s end. Norg is being impatient. Finding suitable staff for the brand new Garden is proving harder than he anticipated. His wife is on a ship somewhere, Hyne knows where, the Centra region maybe, if Cid had to guess, miles and miles out of his reach. He is lonely, he is frustrated, and he has two small boys shoving and pushing each other at his feet. Literally at his feet, he thinks in resignation, staring down at the struggling bodies, and trying not to be angry with them. They’re bored, he knows, there is nothing for them to do here yet and Cid is far too busy to pay them the attention they need. He briefly considers taking them to Kadowaki but, given her response last time, he figures discretion is the better part of valour, especially if he actually wants to keep her on staff.

“Enough.” He says finally, putting his hands on his hips and trying to mimic Edea’s best disappointed frown. “If you can’t behave, I’ll have to send you away.”

“To Matron?” Squall asks, voice sullen but eyes lit up with a hope that tears at Cid’s insides and makes Seifer snort.

 “Matron is gone. Just like Sis. Gonna cry about it?”

Squall shoves him, silently furious, and there goes the moment of possible peace, Seifer yelling and pushing back. Cid holds his forehead in his hands and the burden on his shoulders feels impossible to bear.

“Enough!” He yells, much louder this time, and two sets of startled eyes look up at him. He can’t remember the last time he raised his voice, but something had to give, and apparently his temper is it. “No fighting in Garden!” he says, jabbing a finger at each of them in turn. “It’s a rule!”

Seifer scrunches up his face. “We’re _supposed_ to fight. That’s what Garden is _for_.” He insists and Squall nods along in agreement, united in the face of apparent hypocrisy. At least they’re agreeing on something, but Cid is pretty sure he doesn’t want ‘gang-up on Cid’ to be where these two find a middle ground.

“Nope.” He says, shaking his head and putting his hands back on his hips. “Garden is for _training_. It’s for getting strong and fast!”

Squall, at least, seems to be considering this, even if Seifer is regarding him with all the skepticism a 7-year-old can muster. “Three laps around the ground floor ring!” Cid decides abruptly. It’s a big ask for such small legs, given the size of the Garden, but Cid can be pretty sure that, as stubborn as these two are, they’ll do it. If only in the attempt to out-do the other. And it will, Hyne-be-blessed, tire the two little grats out enough that they’ll be too exhausted to cause any more trouble. “Go on, right now! You broke a rule so now you have to do laps!”

Neither boy moves, obviously trying to calculate how serious Cid is. He decides he’s not above bribery. “First one to finish gets to choose what we have for desert.” _That_ gets them moving, still shoving each other but this time in an effort to get to the door first, Seifer’s love of anything chocolate as fierce as Squall’s dislike.

 

*-*-*-*

 

“It’s a rule!” Seifer announces, painstakingly copying the list Cid had given him into a notebook.

Squall stares at him unconvinced, but Seifer won’t let him see the list, so Squall can’t know for really actually sure. He still thinks Seifer is lying.

“It _is_.” Seifer insists even more vehemently. “Rule number...” he pauses, carefully counting the ones he’s written down so far and adding another number, “Six!”

“Is not.”

“Is too! If it’s written down in the rule book, it’s a rule, see? Squall... has... to... do...” he reads aloud as he writes each word down, “what... Seifer... says. There!”

“Do not.” Squall sulks, sliding down in his chair and kicking at the table leg.

“Do too! It’s in the rule book, now. It’s a _rule_.”

“Rules are stupid.”

Privately, Seifer thinks they kind of are, too. But this is different, these are _his_ rules. They’re better than normal rules like ‘be quiet’ and ‘don’t run.’ Grown up rules are dumb and they change a lot. Cid makes them run all the time. But Seifer has these ones written down, now, so they can’t change and people _have_ to do what he says. Which means Squall does, too, and that’s important because he’s supposed to take care of Squall, he promised. Squall has to listen to him. And it’s a rule now so Squall really, really has to.

“Seifer says....” Seifer scans the empty cafeteria, looking for something he can tell Squall to do. “Get me a juice.”

Squall just looks at him and scowls.

“It’s a _rule_ , Squally.” Seifer tries again, “You hafta get me a juice. I said.”

Nothing, Squall doesn’t even twitch. This is not going how Seifer expected, but Cid always makes them run laps when they break a rule of his, so Seifer figures he can do that too.

“Six laps around Garden!” He decides, “For breaking rule number six!”

By now Seifer knows that particular glint in Squall’s eye means trouble, and he braces himself for a fight, but Squall just shoves himself up from the table and shrugs at Seifer, offering him a narrow glare. “Fine, I’m faster than you already. I’ll just be _even better_ now.”

Squall _is not_. “You are not!” Seifer denies furiously, “I’m faster! And I can run more laps than you anyway!”

“Prove it,” Squall challenges and Seifer slaps the rule book closed, leaving it on the table.

“No running in the cafeteria,” he declares, “But once we’re at the ring you’re going to eat those words _and_ my dust.”


End file.
